Due to the aftermath of the fire, the elderly man in Ventspils was left without housing. Local residents say that he lived in extreme poverty and often did not have enough money to buy firewood for heating the house. Therefore, other devices were used for heating, which apparently became the cause of the fire.
The smoke from the burning two-story house was visible from several blocks away, reports the Degpunktā program (TV3). An 80-year-old man had lived in this house for decades. As much as his means allowed, he repaired the house himself and took care of the property. Now the house is completely destroyed and cordoned off with warning tape.
"He was heating there because he probably didn’t have firewood. And he was heating with some gas appliance because when the firefighters arrived, they said that gas cylinders had been thrown out. (Degpunktā: So, the fire started because of the gas heater?) Well, most likely. He probably didn’t keep an eye on it. Somehow he was heating with gas, I don’t know exactly," said a neighbor.
Suspicions that the fire started due to the gas heater are strengthened by the fact that smoke from the old man's chimney was almost never visible. Last winter, according to neighbors, the house was never heated.
"If there was firewood, he would heat it sometimes. Sometimes I saw that smoke was coming out, but mostly he didn’t heat it because he didn’t have firewood. He was low-income, he seemed to have some kind of allowance," said a local resident.
Neighbors say that during the fire, the man was inside the house. Realizing that he could not cope on his own, he probably went out to the yard, waiting for help: "He seemed to somehow get out himself, he had already inhaled smoke. And, apparently, he managed to call both the ambulance and the firefighters himself."
"At the scene, it was established that a residential house was burning with open flames over an area of 160 m². Before the rescue service arrived, a person who was injured evacuated from the building and was handed over to the Emergency Medical Service," said GPSS representative Sandra Veiņa.
The Ventspils City Council reported that the elderly man is now doing well. After the incident, he spent a few days at his daughter’s place and was then placed in one of the municipal apartments.
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